accounts in the business's name
Every account created for the work, from hosting to analytics to advertising, is set up using the business's own email and ownership, never a vendor's, so nothing depends on staying with any one contractor.
A business often ends up with its core online accounts, hosting, analytics, advertising, sitting under a vendor’s or an agency’s own login rather than its own. It happens gradually and innocently: a developer sets everything up quickly using an account they already have, and years later the business owner realizes they cannot get into their own Google Ads account, or their own domain registrar, without going through someone else first.
Accounts in the business’s name means the opposite arrangement from the start. Cloudflare, Google Analytics, the advertising account, the domain, all of it lives under the business’s own email, created with the business as the owner. Anyone doing the technical work, myself included, is added into those accounts, not the other way around.
Why it matters to you
If everything runs under a vendor’s account, the business is one falling-out, one unresponsive email, or one closed agency away from losing access to its own domain, its own advertising history, its own analytics data going back years. That is not a hypothetical risk. It is exactly what happened when one client’s advertising ran from an account they did not own, and fourteen ads sat disapproved without anyone able to act on it directly.
Accounts in the business’s name means that risk simply does not exist. Whatever happens with any working relationship, the business still owns and controls every account that runs its website and its marketing.
How I set it up
Every account I create for a client starts with the business’s own email address as the owner, holding super admin where that role exists. I am added into each account at the access level the work requires, which is the same principle behind access, not ownership generally. This applies across the board: the domain registrar, the hosting, analytics, the ad account, and the inbox that receives leads. None of it sits under a personal account of mine or a generic agency login.
Where a business already has accounts set up under someone else’s name, the first step is usually working out what can be transferred cleanly and what needs to be rebuilt in the business’s own name instead, since not every platform makes ownership transfer simple.
What it looks like in practice
Log into any of the core accounts and the owner listed is the business itself, under its own email address, not a developer’s personal account or an agency’s shared login. If the business ever needs to remove a contractor’s access, change a password, or simply check what is actually running under its name, it can do that directly, without needing anyone’s cooperation to get there.
Questions I get about this
- How do I know if my current accounts are actually in my name?
- Log into each one, Cloudflare, Google Analytics, the ad platform, and check who owns it and what email created it. If it was set up by a past web developer or agency using their own email, it is not in the business's name, whatever it looks like day to day.
- What if my accounts aren't in my name right now?
- They can usually be moved, though the process depends on the platform and on the current owner's cooperation. It is far easier to set them up correctly from the start than to untangle them afterward.
- Does this cost more than letting a vendor manage everything under their own accounts?
- No. It is the same accounts either way. The only difference is whose email and ownership sits at the top, which does not change the cost of running them.
Where this fits in our work
Want this set up properly for your business?
This is the kind of thing I build every week. Grab a time and we will talk through what fits.